Back in France: Paris

As much as I loved seeing so many new places in France, it felt wonderful to settle back into my favorite city, Paris.

On our first day there, our guide Myriam walked us by the Allée des Justes to show us the wall of the Righteous - Gentiles who had helped out Jews during the Shoah and been named Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem. I was pleased to see the Trocmés but nothing prepared me for seeing the names of Marie Chotel and Henri Briard.

Several years back when I was taking a graduate class on Women and the Holocaust, I read the book Doors to Madame Marie by Odette Meyers. She chronicled her time in France during the Shoah, and it was her landlady Marie Chotel and Marie's partner Henri Briard who risked their lives to save Odette and her mother. I had the good fortune to meet Odette's son Daniel in Paris that summer and so I felt a bit of a personal connection to those names.

André and Magda Trocmé, along with their entire village of Le Chambon-Sur-Lignon, were responsible for saving about 5,000 Jewish lives - most of them children

Henri Briard and Marie Chotel helped to save Odette Meyers and her mother Berthe

Since this is my eighth (and maybe final) trip to Paris, I did not take a lot of photos and instead tried to just be in the moment and soak it all in. I have so many photos of landmarks, so when I did take pictures, I tried to capture unique aspects of Paris I had not yet photographed. Paris is so very photogenic, so this was not difficult to do...

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